Flux compactification

What the term means here

Compactification with background field strengths (fluxes) threaded through cycles of the internal manifold. The fluxes are quantized, and different choices generate different four-dimensional potentials.

Why it matters to this question

Fluxes generate a potential for many of the moduli, which is the first step in stabilizing them. The large number of allowed flux choices is also the origin of the "landscape" picture of many possible vacua.

What this does not establish

Flux stabilization of some moduli does not by itself produce a de Sitter vacuum, and counting flux choices does not establish that any of them is under effective-field-theory control.